"I know," I says. "Husbands and wives _is_ awful simultaneous, I always think." But I didn't say anything more, being I wasn't married to one; and they didn't say anything more, being they was. Mis' Holcomb waved her cheese at me, cheerful. "Be gay for us!" says she, and then went home to cook supper for her hungry family. And so did I, wishing with all my heart that the two of them--that hadn't seen over the rim of home in thirty years--could have had my chance. When I got to the city that night it was raining--rather, it was past raining and on up to pouring. So I got in a taxi to go up to Ellen's--a taxi that was nothing but an automobile after all, in spite of its foreign name, ending in a letter that no civilized name ought to end in. And never, never, not if I live till after my dying day, will I forget my first look at that living-room of theirs--in the apartment building, as big as a ship, and as lighted up as our church at Christmas-time, which was where Ellen and Russell lived. A pretty maid let me in. I remember I went in by her with my eyes on her white embroidery cap, perked up on her head and all ironed up, saucy as a blue jay's crest. "Excuse me," I says to her over my shoulder, "I've read about them, but yours is the first one I ever saw. My dear, you look like a queen in a new starched crown." She was an awful stiff little thing--'most as stiff as her head-piece. She never smiled. "What name?" she says, though--and I see she was friendlier than I'd thought. "Why, mine's Calliope Marsh," I says, hearty. "What's yours?" She looked so funny--I guess not many paid her much attention. "Delia," she says. "You're expected," she says, and opened the inside door. The room was long and soft and wine-colored, with a fire burning in the fireplace, and more lamps than was necessary, but that altogether didn't make much more light than one, only spread it out more. The piano was open, and there was a vase of roses--in Winter! They seemed to have them, I found out later, as casual as if there was a combined wedding and funeral in the house all the time. But they certainly made a beautiful picture. But all this I sort of took in out of my eyes' four corners, while the rest of me looked at what was before the fire. A big, low-backed chair was there, as fat and soft as a sofa. And in it was Ellen, in a white dress--in Winter! She wore them, I saw after a while, as casual as if she was at a party, perpetual. But there was something else there in a white dress, too, sitting on her lap, with his pink, bare feet stretched out to the blaze. And he was laughing, and Ellen was, too, at Russell, her husband, sitting on the floor, and aiming his head right at the baby's stomach, to hear him laugh out like--oh, like bluebells must be doing in the Spring. "Pretty enough to paint," says I--which was the first they knew I was there.